I stream wirelessly from media stored on desktop, no dramas, although I don't have much HD content to really test the wireless reliability. But both media players going and a laptop or two on wireless it works fine.

Getting the networking part set-up can be a little tricky though - but I must confess I'm pretty s*** at networking.

And you need to remember a few tricks like not to turn of the server pc while the WD TV is on, otherwise it can freeze and you need to reconnect and this can sometimes be pita, but otherwise they are great.

Looking at picking one up this afternoon (WDBGXT0NBK) as my old lappy that was our media PC finally croaked. Anyone have any input on how well it works over wi-fi and what custom firmware is available and decent? I love XBMC but happy to give it up for something new.

Works very well over Wi-Fi N. I can stream 720p Linux iso no worries over WiFi as long as it hasn't been encoded with crazy frame rate you should play without problems. If you have a NAS / Windows shared on your network, you just open the share, put in username/password and off it goes. I've got the QNAP NAS and they work together like a dream. Also you can plug your USB keyboard either wireless or wired into it (or other USB drives) so you can type in your user/pass for WiFi/Share. Save a s*** load of time.

Haven't come across a file that it couldn't play yet. Plus it's easy for the other half to use (+billion points) and also has other cool things like the ABC iView and various other plugins like Facebook etc. It can be slow to load these other services though so just be patient, iView takes a while to load but once it's loaded it played very well on my 50" TV (a bit grainy but very, very watchable). Also if you have logitech universal remote, it's also in the Database so you can basically program your remote to control it as well, use that and the macro now my other half basically never asks me how to turn on the home theatre - +eleventy billion points.

Best $100 I spent on home media centre that I don't have to f*** around with.

I've got one Hoggy, is has been super reliable. I run Custom Firmware: As it does help with a couple of minor things. The UI is probably the worst part about it, don't bother with UI 'mods' or anything as they are just a pain in the arse to set-up and keep maintained.

I think the WDTVLIVE can handle only up to 2TB with custom firmware. I think some >2TB drives work, but don't bet on it.

I copy stuff to a 2TB HDD attached to the WDTVLIVE several rooms away, I get about 1.7MB/s, good enough to stream HD media if I want.

Not a fan of my WDtv live hub thing whatever the name is. Having all sorts of issues with it so I'm going to abandon it and today I bought a Roku which has a Plex app for it, on top of being able to get all sorts of other tv channels so look forward to it arriving next week sometime.

I've got one for the living room, connected with a Ethernet cord to my computer until I feel like making some form of external storage. I haven't bothered with custom firmware, seems to work perfectly fine out of the box. I just use Serviio to stream.

ATM I'm running XBMC on ATV2, but its a bit slow with Eden and ATV3 isn't jailbroken yet so I wouldn't mind something a bit nicer. Already have PS3/360 but prefer XBMC (PS this is all about streaming from a NAS).

But I dunno what you peeps are on about re the crappy remote. Sure it's not encrusted with diamonds but it's on par with any other remote I have. It is also good enough to operate the media player hidden behind the TV (no direct line of site).

After some fiddling I got it to work and turns out it works really well! However since this is through the internet browser and not a dedicated app, does anyone know if it uses your internet connection to stream it? Because my remote viewing setting is set to 480p, 1.5mbps and some of my higher quality movies are noticeably artifacted as if they were a 700mb avi. I don't have the fastest internet either so this could be pointless for me if it does use my net.

Plex back-end is great, however XBMC front end is still the best. The only problem is that you need a beefy computer. Plex works great on the high power NAS drives from Synology and QNAP great idea if you are trying to save money on Power.

My Roku 2 XD arrived today and 15 minutes later had it set up with Netflix and a ton of other US based channels I won't be using for now. Couldn't be happier with it and really recommend it for the $78 it cost on amazon. Including my unblock.us account and netflix it costs me about $13 a month which i'm more than happy to pay. Comes with a plex app on the channel store which is a free install and works great so no complaints there either. Also very happy that even with my not so great internet netflix works without problems, though it does start off a bit fuzzy at first but it clears up to dvd quality after a minute or 2. Highly recommend this little box.

So there was a new update to the WD TV recently which adds support for a mobile app (Android and I think iOS). The app is pretty good; you can do keyboard input and control video play pretty easily - certainly better than with the other remote for keyboard input.

I find using it as a normal remote control not that good though because you have to look at the phone screen to see what you're pressing, as opposed to the real remote which you can sort of use without looking at it because of the extruded buttons.

Didn't bother with the WDTV in the end as the Plex server happily streams to my TBox, Wii U (playback on gamepad is nice!), and iPad, and when I get a Win8 hybrid tablet it will work there too, the Metro app is quite nice. I literally wouldn't have anything to plug it into if I had bought one now :)